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This article concerns three Ukrainian texts about the experience of disease, as well as the social activism undertaken by the authors of these texts. It shows how literature can become an activity that helps people suffering from various diseases and how, with the help of a literary text, one can change social awareness and effect changes in attitudes, beliefs and behaviour.
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The article analyses the motif of blindness and enlightenment in Old East Slavic literature (on the basis of the "Tale of Bygone Years" by Nestor the Chronicler) and Old Polish literature (on the basis of "The Polish Chronicle" by Gallus Anonymus). The main focus is on the blindness of two rulers – Prince Vladimir the Great of Kiev ("Tale of Bygone Years") and Prince Mieszko of Poland ("The Polish Chronicle" by Gallus Anonymus) and their wonderful enlightenment, revealing both commonalities and differences in the rendering of the motif of blindness and enlightenment. The sources of the stories about the blindness of Vladimir the Great and Mieszko are analysed, and it is found that the author of "Tale of Bygone Years" draws upon folk legends, while researchers of "The Polish Chronicle" put forward different hypotheses about its sources. It is determined that in both cases blindness should be understood not only as a physical affliction. The sudden loss of sight by Vladimir the Great ("Tale of Bygone Years") is a manifestation of spiritual blindness. The disease is interpreted as a symbol of the culmination of Vladimir’s life, when he had to choose between paganism and Christianity. Therefore, the recovery of sight has an obvious allegorical meaning: baptism is associated with light, enlightenment. Analysing "The Polish Chronicle" by Gallus Anonymus elucidates a symbolic meaning of the blindness of Mieszko, having to do with a country and a people who have long been in darkness. The enlightenment and recovery of sight by Mieszko become a premonition of the future of Poland, a kind of boundary between the past and the future, between paganism and Christianity. It is outlined that the moment of Christianisation (enlightenment) in both cases had not only personal but also state significance, as it contributed to the accession of Rus’ and Poland to the family of European states.
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The article provides an overview of works of individual artists who despite struggling with illness were able to continue their creative activities applying the technique of paper cutting. Works of Henri Matisse are first considered, for whom scissors replaced a paintbrush when he lacked the strength to work at the easel. Among the Ukrainian artists the article considers Mykhailo Kuzemskyi, a folk master of the latter half of the 20th century from the village of Remeniv in Kamianka-Buzka District (Lviv Region), who suffered from a congenital lack of hearing and found the opportunity for self-realization in the creative process. The paper also features an analysis of works by Olha Shynkarenko, a modern artist who after a long illness commenced to create original torn paper collages. The paper cutting art’s therapeutic effect is exemplified by creations of Tetiana Rudyk, a fine arts teacher from the town of Bar (Vinnytsia Region), as well as a work by Taia Pervak, a schoolgirl from the city of Chasiv Yar (Donetsk Region), who attends the art studio headed by Viktoriia Nesterova. The examples analysed in the article demonstrate a wide range of possibilities of the paper cutting technique as both an accessible form of creation and a means of conscious and unconscious art therapy.
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Taking as an example a short though highly expressive story Siedoi by Oles Ulianenko, the article suggests a novel, corporal-mimetic variant of theoretical literary analysis. In it, literary works are researched first and foremost considering their corporal dimension; this method can be defined as a method to analyse the corporal-existential background of the fiction discourse. Using this approach, the conclusion is drawn that the content of Oles Ulianenko’s literary work is determined, in the first place, by the author’s attempt to favour the formation of a controversial discourse on the basis of the sickly dream strategy, whereby gloomy content of the story under analysis is balanced, in a paradox way, with the stream of a sickly dream, which defies pessimism or at least attaches an ambivalent dimension to it, a dimension directed toward both death and recovery, that is to say, life.
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Image of the child as a hero of literary text became an important thing in the process of development of Slavic literatures of XX century. Writings of E. Ozheshko, F. Dostoyevsky, H. Sienkiewicz evidence it the best of all. In Ukrainian literature such examples represent Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi’s early stories such as "Kharytia, Yalynka" ("Fir Tree"), "Malenkyi Hrishnyk" ("A Little Sinner"). They were debut creatings of the author and publication of those stories had become possible thanks to the cooperation of the author with the editorial office of the child magazine “Dzvinok” (“A Small Ring”) which had been publishing in Halychyna. Showing the types of children the writer combined principles of everyday-realistic style with elements of psychological writing. We can find this in laconic portraits of heroes, dynamic dialogues, masterful landscapes Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi’s heroes are shown in the border situations of life in their standing before the moral choice. The author’s little heroes are closely connected with the world of adults and reflect the current problems of this world.
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Social and national cataclysms of the early twentieth century are comprehended in the works of Modest Levitsky through the prism of the child’s world. Expressive humanistic pathos and psychologism determine the life stories of his little heroes, affected by the problems of adults ("Happiness of Peysach Leiderman, Good Deed, Hard Road, Niobe, By Law", etc.). In the composition and ideological accents of the instructive story «Petrus’ Dream» a great role is played by dream; the interest of the text is also in the apocryphal story about the sufferings of the crucified Christ and the sparrows is projected on interethnic relations. The plots of the cycle State Children, the story "Schoolmates" have a memoir character.
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Understanding children’s literature of the tragic 1930s for Ukrainian literature makes it possible to understand the essence of the Bolshevik government’s experiment in building a „new society” and forming a „new man”. Prose works "Morning" (1933) by Ivan Mykytenko, "Very Good" (1936) and "Tenth-graders" (1938) by Oleksandr Kopylenko, "School over the Sea" (1937) by Oles Donchenko, "Childhood" (1936), "Our Secrets" (1936), "Eighteen" (1938) by Yuri Smolych, Mykola Trublaini’s Schooner "Columbus" (1940) form an idea of childhood as a life stage in which important universal humanistic values (friendship, fidelity, responsibility, etc.) are formed, but also modeled the image of a member of a new society, for whom the public prevails over the personal, establishes a special black-and-white picture of the world in opposition to „own / enemy”. The idealization of „Soviet childhood” actualises the literature, which in its own way comprehends the children’s experience of an ambiguous social era.
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The article analyses the works of Volodymyr Kulish in the 1960s: memories of the "Slovo pro budynok" and the "Pacany. Povist pro bezprytulnych". These two texts are considered as a diptych about childhood. The genre features of the works, the specifics of the chronotope are revealed. The historical and cultural context has been reconstructed: an attempt has been made to compare the memoirs of V. Kulish and I. Senchenko, as well as to comprehend Patsana’s story in the context of literature about the homeless in the 1920s and 1930s (first of all, I. Mykytenko’s story "Vurkagana"). Particular attention is paid to the interpretation of motives of sports, art, adventure, homelessness, cinematic quotes are found in the story "Pacany".
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The paper conveys an analysis and interpretation of the 1960s–1970s literary prose of the Ukrainian writer Hryhir Tiutiunnyk. Autobiographism-based novels and short stories present the writer’s childhood during World War II. It is claimed that the war, and especially its early period, constitute a background for showing the true image of life in the Ukrainian land, which the Soviet authorities had turned into their internal colony – an analog of the third world. An orphaned child, as the weakest link in the Ukrainian society of the time, goes through traumatic experiences that would influence his entire life. The works of Tiutiunnyk as well as other writers tackling similar issues facilitate research in the post-colonial thinking trend and allow employing post-colonial theory tools not only for the post-totalitarian era, beginning after the 1989–1991 transformation period in Middle and Eastern Europe, but also directly for colonial practices and states before the critical event.
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The article is devoted to the analysis of prose for children and youth of the second half of the twentieth century on the topic of war. The main emphasis is on the anti-militaristic orientation of the prose thinking of H. Tyutyunnik, Y. Hutsalо, M. Vingranovsky, who tried in their own way to avoid the traditional idealism in regard to their war and post-war childhood. The writers do not change their style and worldview guidelines; their work is consistent with the general aesthetic principles and trends in the development of literature in the 60s. of the XX century. As an artistic fact of the cultural epoch, it shows a complex of spiritual and emotional foundations in its development: vitality, optimism, love and faith, kindness, humanity, and the value of human life.
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The article analyses the image of the Lost Childhood in novel "Internat" by Serhii Zhadan. Attention is drawn on the problem of artistic comprehension of the traumatic experience of the totalitarian past and the military present. The novel examines the impact of the category of trauma on the formation of national and cultural identity, as well as the transmission of traumatic experiences, resulting in generational misunderstandings and gaps.
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The article analyses the main stages of controlled world comprehension by the child in war period. The literary model of children’s consciousness is presented in the novel "The Boy in Striped Pyjamas" by J. Boyne as an integral and systematic process. The nature of children’s consciousness is mainly influenced by the principles of education and the environment which surround the child. The self-consciousness of children characters is marked as significantly high and it constantly develops from the awareness of their social status to a particular nation affiliation. Despite the different ways of the world cognition, peers who belong to different nations and have considerably opposite living conditions are united by friendship and genuine child sincerity.
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Childhood, childishness, adulthood – these categories are changing during crises, acute social change, and especially during the war. The works of writers of two different nations, about two different wars, are however united by one common feature: in the centre of these works is the fate of a child who must live / survive / grow up during the war. Interpretation of a child’s psychology of influence of social events on the fate of a small person, which values help to survive and which are levelled is considered in the novels Serhii Zhadan’s "Boarding School" and Marcus Zuzak’s "The Book Thief". An attempt to combine works about the times of the middle of the XX and the beginning of the XXI centuries makes possible to compare and find common features in multinational literatures in depicting childhood in times of crisis.
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Suggested study is the revision of one of the most complicated problem in psychological and especially in the cultural reception of the war. The author of the article researches the child experience of it and the literary ways of its representation as trauma. The main topic of the study is one fate of one girl in one war. It doesn’t matter which war it is – contemporary or historical, world or local. The influence of it on the child consciousness changes its life and destroys all imaginations about future, family and relations between people outside of the war. In the article it is used the researching instruments of memory and trauma studies which give possibilities to represent literature abilities of working through of war experience which is useful for cultural society which hadn't done it in time.
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The literary process in any culture and country continues to evolve due to political, social and historical factors; another important factor in the modern era is the popularisation of trends. The changeable nature of literary genres, topics and character prototypes is, therefore, a given. This paper reconstructs the shaping of the fictional characters in Ukrainian literature at the turn of the 21st century—from the characters of Ukrainian modernism,“Homo Sovieticus” and the underground up to the present day. The shaping of Ukrainian fictional characters during this time was not easy. With the arrival of Ukrainian postmodernism, the characters became uncertain and were forced into endless searching with no real hopes for the future. The main protagonists of the current Ukrainian novels have changed: they look to the past to assess and understand the world they live in but are perhaps still searching and have to follow a path of self-discovery to be able to finally stop and fully understand their identity.
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František Kautman, in his study of the Czech national identity, observes that we are not born with the awareness of which nation we belong to but that during our adolescence we create opinions which lead us to know what nation we are a part of. Undoubtedly, parents, school, surrounding environment, etc., contribute to the perception of the world as well as formation of the individual. In this case, we necessarily need culture, language and literature to educate a nation. Language is the most important component in the initial phase of forming a national identity without which we cannot understand culture and literature. This formula would be ideal. However, what happens if a territory is a part of more than one country in a single century? What if the only answer to a question of nationality is the hometown name? These considerations are partly solved by Maxim Dupeshko, a Ukrainian writer, in his novel called “A Story Worth an Entire Apple Orchard”, which serves as an example of dealing with the issue of searching for national identity in Ukrainian literature.
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The paper focuses on themes, such as illegal Ukrainian workers or different national stereotypes, in literary production of a contemporary Ukrainian writer Natalka Sniadanko. For this work were chosen two of her novels—the debut A Collection of Passions and Misadventures of a Young Ukrainian Lady (2001) and Frau Müller Will Not Pay More (2013). In her fiction Sniadanko tends to reflect life experience of Ukrainian women who have left their homeland in search of a better life and future. The author also shows different national mentality, issues of women’s emancipation and Eastern European guest workers, so called “gastarbeiters”. The aim of the paper is to prove, based on theme analysis, Sniadanko’s literary work is not just so-called “chick lit”, but it also stands a chance as a product of highbrow literature.
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The writers very often address the basic question of the direction of life, which can be seen in the literature of all countries and times. However, the history and transformations of the society are significantly reflected in the way of looking at human existence. Therefore, this comparative study focuses on the comparison of two authors of contemporary Ukrainian and Czech prose in order to portray the perception of the modern world by young people. The selected novels are closely interconnected by a number of common features: the tendency of pop-literature, the search for one’s own identity in a time of indefiniteness and uncertainty (which is typical for contemporary literature), characters are lost in their ways which lead to nowhere, where a way (depicted as trains and tracks) and losing a home are distinctive images in the authors’ work. Through the exploration of the main characters, their state of mind and thoughts as well as the environment in which they live, we conclude that both the Ukrainian and the Czech writer use their characters to reflect the conscience, nervousness and unease of their generation in the uncertainty of today’s times.
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The bestiary as a genre originated in the Late Antiquity, when a Greek anonymous work called Fysiologus was written. Not only it described animals (both real and mythical), plants and stones, but it also ascribed them their symbolical meaning, which is interpreted using the Bible. Medieval bestiaries have been attractive thanks to their inspirational fantasies and powerful metaphors until today. They relate the appearance and character of various creatures to the life of a Christian, teaching him to live properly. The present study is dedicated to the collection of short prose Zviroslov (2009) by Tania Malyarchuk. It analyses this book from the point of view of the typology and history of a bestiary as a genre. In its second part, the study focuses on the poetics of the Zviroslov and on the possibilities of this genre to describe our society.
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The problem of post-Galician multicultural narration is analyzed in the article on the example of Ukrainian and Polish contemporary literature. The author shows the phenomenon of Galicia and it results on todayʼs cultural and literary space of Ukraine and Poland on the examples of the works of contemporary writers of both countries: Juri Andrukhovych, Juri Prokhasko, Natalia Sniadanko, Andrzej Stasiuk, Zemovit Scherek and others.
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